Sometimes you just have to make the most of the opportunities in front of you.

About a year ago, Skittles took one of their sweet looking custom vending machines (the same vending machines they give to celebrities) and offered it up to anyone that could convince them through either photo or video why they were a worthy recipient.

One (well actually two) of the responses came from Trale Lewous, a character played by Nathan J. Barnatt, a YouTube ‘celebrity’ that creates wacky characters and makes odd videos with those characters.

Predictably, his entry videos were a little… odd:

But that should come as no surprise, since Trale Lewous made odd commercials for Skittles on his own without any reward:

Since Skittles is an odd brand, they seized upon this odd opportunity, and delivered Trale his prize:

Since Trale was already a huge Skittles fan, the videos continued:

Skittles again seized upon the opportunity in front of them, and delivered a custom boombox to help Trale Lewous with his music videos:

A month later, another video emerged from the Trale Lewous/Skittles partnership:

By keeping the videos low-budget, Skittles doesn’t need millions of views to justify the campaign. Even a few hundred thousand well targeted views would be enough to make this campaign a success, especially when many of those views come from hard to crack communities like Reddit.

Now many brands would have called it quits after a series of successful videos, but Skittles decided to take their partnership a step further by making Trale the star of an online video contest, which they teased:

And then formally announced with their new official spokesperson:

RideTheRainbow.com is, as you’d expect, a bit odd, but it fits with the type of brand they’re trying to create, and appeals to their intended audience. (The same people that watch and enjoy videos featuring Trale Lewous.)

Since this whole thing started with a vending machine giveaway, the hope must be that by giving away a Skittles pinball machine, they’ll unearth the next Trale Lewous, and start the cycle all over again.

And with an endless supply of new talent flooding YouTube every day, doing whatever it takes to stand out, Skittles should have no problem finding their next star.

No that long ago, blog writers were the primary curators of content online, and we’d all tune in to see what they’d recommend next. Ads would try to place themselves next to premium content on premium channels, but the connection was loose at best, and readers knew the ads were paying for the placement, so they would still get ignored.

However, as companies realized there was value in being the source of new, interesting and unique content, curation became a viable marketing tactic. Through Twitter, Facebook, and other curation channels, companies would find and share content related to their own products in hopes of attracting the sustained interest of their target market.

Over time, as trust shifted and consumers were more willing to look outside of the traditional sources for new content, additional verticals started to adapt to this trend, including ad networks and daily deal sites.

A few posts ago, I talked about ‘Acceptable Ads‘ from networks like The DECK, Fusion Ads, Carbon Ads, InfluAds, Yoggrt, and Ad Packs by BuySellAds. I argued that these networks are working to become curators of content, not just broadcasters of the highest bidder, and as a result, the products they advertise get additional value out of just being picked to be featured in the ads.

Field Notes is another brand owned by Coudal Partners, the company behind The DECK, and they recently created a banner ad that caught my eye:

As you can see, there’s no call to action, no product shot and no sales pitch. Instead, there’s just a colored box, a product name and the fact that they ‘made a red one’.

If you aren’t already familiar with Field Notes, or aren’t the world’s biggest fan of the color red, you might look right past this ad without a second thought. And if you were to compare it to the Anatomy of the Perfect Banner Ad from BuySellAds, this banner would fail every test.

However, because Field Notes has such a long standing presence on The DECK, and because readers of sites that feature ads from The DECK trust the network to only highlight products they might be interested in, Field Notes is free to focus on a single point they’re trying to get across; that their notebooks, which specialize in creative colors and seasonal varieties, are now available in red.

It’s a simple message, but perhaps the most effective given the audience’s existing familiarity with the product, and trust in the network.

If you click on the ad (because how are you NOT going to click on an ad like that?) you’re presented with a fantastic video that explains the new red color, and tells an inspiring tale of love and adventure:

As Coudal Partners says on their site:

When you’re your own client, and there’s no one to step all over your ideas, what happens? Well for us anyhow, we wind up with a series of promotional films that hardly ever mention the product, or only mention it tangentially.

Apparently that philosophy extends to their banner ads as well.

Coudal also goes on to point out videos for their Fire Spotter, Northerly and Monona County Fair editions of Field Notes, which each featured new colors and a new story to tell, but didn’t feature a lot of the product being pushed down your throat.

While this doesn’t work for everyone, it’s important to keep in mind that there are other factors to an ad’s success besides just the image and the copy. Something as simple as the network that it runs on can have a huge effect on the response the ad receives.

In my next post, I’ll dive deeper into this trend of brands and networks as curators of content.